One of these days I'm going to document my workflow (it's a long overdue project I said I'd do here on CR), but at the end of the day, other than learning how to use the software, each person's style is different.

Also, I regularly read about people spending 10, 20, even 40 or 50 hours editing one photo. Assuming they are telling the truth, that sounds INSANE. My most complicated edit/retouch has never taken more than 2-3 hours. I really wonder what these people could possibly be doing.

When I was thirteen, I would spend a few hours a week looking at a photo... Jenny mccarthy specifically.

LOL!!!!!!!!!! That's not the kind of, um, well, POST-processing I was talking about, but thanks for the laugh!

In that case, you're probably not doing wildlife - most of the time, you cannot control the lighting and have only so many seconds to decide what the correct settings are. Me, I'd rather have a shot that local adjustments in postprocessing than no shot at all.

2. Global Contrast - again, this affects other adjustments - I typically add a touch to most shots, but more if there's flare, fog, or other things that have reduced contrast, unless that's the look I want

In LR, I raise global contrast only to remove haze, and then mostly with the brush. Just adding contrast doesn't look good to my eye, it's nice with curves and black/white clipping control.

I'm a big believer in keeping things simple and having enough control in camera so that post is kept to a minimum. I'm a fine art photographer and I shoot mostly in cities. I sell my work online and will probably sell in the neighbourhood of 500 images this year. Here's my workflow. First off, I'm still using Photoshop 6.0, it's old but it does everything I want it to. As soon as I open the image I hit 'autocontrast', then I crop the image, resize it and finally sharpen it. That works 99% of the time.

2. Global Contrast - again, this affects other adjustments - I typically add a touch to most shots, but more if there's flare, fog, or other things that have reduced contrast, unless that's the look I want

In LR, I raise global contrast only to remove haze, and then mostly with the brush. Just adding contrast doesn't look good to my eye, it's nice with curves and black/white clipping control.

5. Color - using HSL- if there is a color cast left after WB adjustments, I correct it here.

That's interesting, I never tried that - what exact color casts do you target in hsl mode?

In DxO, my primary RAW processor, global contrast works a bit differently, but I typically add very little. I use curves for more control if needed. As for color casts, when I used to do more event work, I'd get a lot of mixed lighting and would use it to cancel yellow and cyan casts from tungsten & fluorescent lights, respectively. Sometime I'll use it for cool shadows as well to tone down the blue.

I'm a big believer in keeping things simple and having enough control in camera so that post is kept to a minimum. I'm a fine art photographer and I shoot mostly in cities. I sell my work online and will probably sell in the neighbourhood of 500 images this year. Here's my workflow. First off, I'm still using Photoshop 6.0, it's old but it does everything I want it to. As soon as I open the image I hit 'autocontrast', then I crop the image, resize it and finally sharpen it. That works 99% of the time.

I think I listen too much to people here... I expose to the right by a 3rd of a stop... so my images out of camera all look overexposed with little contrast and even less saturation. But that is what post is for... fixing what I broke.

I'm a big believer in keeping things simple and having enough control in camera so that post is kept to a minimum. I'm a fine art photographer and I shoot mostly in cities. I sell my work online and will probably sell in the neighbourhood of 500 images this year. Here's my workflow. First off, I'm still using Photoshop 6.0, it's old but it does everything I want it to. As soon as I open the image I hit 'autocontrast', then I crop the image, resize it and finally sharpen it. That works 99% of the time.

I think I listen too much to people here... I expose to the right by a 3rd of a stop... so my images out of camera all look overexposed with little contrast and even less saturation. But that is what post is for... fixing what I broke.

I think that workflow is a very personal thing in some ways, but for me, it's all about shooting the perfect negative (as Ansel Adams would say) and then extracting as much out of it in post as I can. That means exposing to the right (ETTR) and then making a fair amount of adjustments in post. I wouldn't see much point in shooting RAW otherwise. To some people, that translates as I can't expose properly and rely on post to fix my mistakes. This is exactly the opposite of the truth. It's more difficult to get a good ETTR exposure than a "proper exposure" that the camera handles well in auto and semi-auto modes 90% of the time.

On the other hand, I don't like heavy-handed editing (cloning, healing brush, etc.), especially with nature shots where people remove every objectionable leave, water bubble, stone, or branch and end up with some pristine environment around their "natural" subject. The same applies to portraits and perfect skin, etc. If you can't recognize the person from their portrait, you've gone too far.

For me, the balance is trying to get the best and cleanest exposure possible and then making exposure and color adjustments in post to produce an image that reflects how I saw the scene.

I think I listen too much to people here... I expose to the right by a 3rd of a stop... so my images out of camera all look overexposed with little contrast and even less saturation. But that is what post is for... fixing what I broke.

As long as you haven't clipped highlights then you haven't broken anything, just bring things back down in post and you should have a cleaner image - that's what ETTR is all about. I don't use it all the time, but it can help with some high ISO shots sometimes.

I think it's a shame that post processing sometimes gets associated with "fixing"; for me it's all about enhancing what's there.

I think I listen too much to people here... I expose to the right by a 3rd of a stop... so my images out of camera all look overexposed with little contrast and even less saturation. But that is what post is for... fixing what I broke.

As long as you haven't clipped highlights then you haven't broken anything, just bring things back down in post and you should have a cleaner image - that's what ETTR is all about. I don't use it all the time, but it can help with some high ISO shots sometimes.

I think it's a shame that post processing sometimes gets associated with "fixing"; for me it's all about enhancing what's there.

I was being cheeky... but when I do ettr, the raw image is better to work with, but the jpg image out of the camera would look blah and over exposed... one of the reasons I don't bother with jpg.